


We Happy Few

by trekkiepirate



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Welters Challenge 2018, unity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 07:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14491617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trekkiepirate/pseuds/trekkiepirate
Summary: A trio of stories about our favorite questers and the days leading up to the Final Battle.





	1. What I Really Meant to Say

**Author's Note:**

> My submission for Welters Challenge Week 2: Unity

Kady stole down the stairs as quietly as she could, skipping the left side of the third from the bottom. It would creak if she stepped on it and she didn’t want to risk anyone in the Cottage waking up. Most everyone was asleep, though the time difference between Earth and Fillory still fucked with her head a little. Margo and Eliot wouldn’t judge her though.

Well, that’s untrue, they would hella judge her; that’s what they did. But they wouldn’t be dicks about it and they’d keep their pity to their goddamn selves.

Kady was getting pretty fucking tired of people walking on eggshells around her since she last was able to talk to Penny and said precisely none of what she really meant to. Alice and Quentin are too busy being bitches to each other, but Julia and Josh have been giving Kady the sad eyes she used to get from teachers who’d just met her mother. Kady could do without it, thanks. They’d be better off pitying that Fen chick.

But now everyone’s asleep, at east everyone currently on Earth and Kady really needs to teach Quentin better security. The damn key bag is literally lying on the table, nothing but a damn strap to keep the secret, precious contents secure. Most of Brakebills is fairly deserted but that Irene cunt wanders around ‘her’ property sometimes. God knows what would happen if she found out about the quest and the keys. Apparently, Julia and Fen are going to try tricking Irene and setting her fairy slaves free in the morning.

Fairy slaves. What the fuck is Kady’s life anymore?

She opened the bag quietly, Quentin slept on one couch and Fen was sleeping on the other. If she’d put away that bottle of whiskey that Kady had seen her with earlier and was now empty on the coffee table, that girl was going to have a monster hangover in the morning. See? Much more in need of pity than someone who just… misses her boyfriend. Who just happens to be mostly dead and stuck in the Underworld.

Again, what the fuck is Kady’s fucking life?

She sorts through the tags and finds the fifth key. Taking a deep breath, she reaches in and takes it from the bag. She moves to the other room and sits at the dining room table.  
It’s silent for a long moment and Kady ventures to whisper, “Penny?”

“Not even close,” Margo says in Kady’s head.

“Fuck,” Kady runs a frustrated hand through her hair, rings catching on her curls. “Margo can you fuck off for a bit? I want to talk to Penny.”

Margo’s voice doesn’t get one iota gentler leaving Kady is annoyed and grateful all at once. “I’m sure you do, but the unity thing involves all of us. Just enjoy yourselves and pretend I’m not watching from the corner of the bed,” her smirk is audible.

“Penny?” Kady tries again.

“Kady?” comes Penny’s beautiful, wonderful, perfect voice.

Kady wants to scream in joy, but she’s already risking more than one of her friends waking up even at the whisper level. “Pen, hi.” Everything she’d planned to say when she finally could rushes from Kady’s head and she hears herself ask, “How are you?”

A pause and then Margo snickers. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, still reining in giggles. “I’ll shut up, but you have to admit that was awkward.”

“The others?” Penny asks as if he’s waiting for more voices.

“Asleep,” Kady explains. “At least here. Eliot too, probably.”

A hum from Margo affirms this, but she doesn’t speak.

“Penny, I-“

“This guy keeps asking me to join his goddamn book club,” Penny says, voice low, as though he’s hiding in the library and doesn’t want to be overheard. “But I’m working on something. There’s this room. People go in and come out all freaked out, but they have a card. Sylvia said it’s like a metro card. Takes you straight out of the Underworld.”

“Can it bring you back to Earth?” Kady can feel her hopes starting to rise and she desperately tries to tamp them back down. Expect the worst every time and any good things that happen are a pleasant surprise, as her mom used to say.

Penny sighs and Kady can visualize him shrugging. She misses those sighs and those shoulders and every damn thing about him. “I don’t know. But I know it takes you Not Here and I definitely want to be Not Here. I just need to get a card somehow.”

“Can you steal one?” Kady asks.

“Gonna try to,” Penny answers. “I’ve got a plan. No one knows where it goes, right? So I just find the likeliest sucker and play the ‘fear of the unknown’ on them and then I can-”

“Penny?” Alice’s voice is confused but loud and from the corner of her eye, Kady can see Quentin stirring on the couch.

“Fuck,” Kady says. “Get the card, Penny. We’ll check in when we can and you can let us know where you are. We’ll find some way to get to you.”

“Kady.”

“Penny, I-“

“Shit!” Penny says. “Jesus, what the fuck? Don’t jump out at people. No I don’t want to join your damn book club. I don’t want to go to prom either. Take a damn hint, Howard!”

Kady drops the key back into the bag as Quentin wakes up and looks at her.

“Was I dreaming?” He’s pushing his hair back and looking bleary eyed around the room.

“Yeah,” Kady says. “We all were.”

Swiping the tears that are mostly definitely not actually happening, Kady turns and heads back upstairs. Penny will get out of the Underworld, they’ll get magic back and take a portal to wherever he ends up. She’ll finally get to tell him she loves him.


	2. Foxhole Prayer

Iris was guiding them through a woodland that looked so much Fillory that Julia kept looking for clock trees as a reflex when she heard it.

“Please keep him safe, please keep him safe, don’t let him get killed or have to stay in that castle forever. Please keep him safe, please keep him safe, please let him come home with us.”

“Eliot?”

Iris stopped and tilted her head at Julia.

“Eliot, are you praying to me?” Julia asked, staring into the distance as she concentrated harder, amplifying the voice she heard in her head.

“I wasn’t praying to you, per se,” came Eliot’s voice, no longer panicked and worried but his usual lofty elegance dripping all over it. “I was mostly just praying. In case there were any gods out there who weren’t total dicks.”

Julia smiled slightly. “I’m not a dick.”

Eliot’s response was immediate. “Then why aren’t you here helping Qu- us all? We could use the extra juice and instead you skip off to go be a goddess on your own. We need all the help we can get, so if there’s any other gods there who want to, I don’t know, grant us a magic sword or an entire clip of gun-killing bullets, we’d be really grateful. Promise not to use them on you. Also a shrine in Fillory if you want, once magic’s back.”

“Can you hear him?” Julia asked Iris, who shook her head.

“You’re a goddess now, you need to let them go,” Iris said, not unkindly. “They belong to your mortal life.”

Julia nodded. “Eliot, I have to go. I wish you-“

“Keep him safe!”

Pausing, Julia said, “Quentin?”

“No, Idris Elba. Yes, Quentin. He’s got the dumbest plan about staying in the castle. Changing places with the knight. I can’t- we can’t- prove you deserve to be his best friend and help him, please.”

Julia concentrated on Eliot, hearing not just his First Thoughts, what he was saying, but the thoughts that lingered behind those.

“I love him, I love him so much and we’re on our way to the castle and I will die for him, I will kill for him, but I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him. I love him so much, I can’t lose him. Anyone but him.”

“Eliot,” she said. “I have to do what I have to do. Quentin is strong, stronger with all of you behind him. I know now what happened at the Mosaic. You played the biggest part in making him into the man he is now. Trust him.”

Eliot was silent for a moment and Julia moved past his thoughts to reach out to the others’, filtering until she found Quentin’s.

“I’ll remember for the both of us,” she heard him saying to someone. To Alice. Underneath it, his mind was calmer than she’d expect.

‘I’ve lived a whole life already with Eliot and our family. I can live off those memories forever. Naming my son after my dad, watching him grow and name his first son after me, Arielle smiling at me, Eliot’s constant, constant love. That’s what the Time Key is for. I can do this. I can remember all of this forever. I can remember Alice too. When it was good. When it was perfect. When I thought I’d end up with her. Alice. Arielle. Eliot. I have a lifetime of love to remember. I just wish I could kiss him too, just one last time. Or tell him-’

Julia flipped back to Eliot, interrupting his continued worries over Quentin’s plan. “Eliot? I have to go, but just know: he loves you too.”

“What?”

“He’s still in love with you,” Julia could feel it burning deep in Quentin’s heart, next to his resolve to keep his deal with the knight, next to his love of Fillory and the deep love he bore for all their friends. “So trust him, because he’s saving the world for you most of all.”

Eliot’s voice, when it came back was grounded and strong as the trees Julia stood beneath. “Good to know. Thank you… what honorific do you use when talking to a goddess?”

“I’m still Julia,” she said with a giggle. “I’m just… more now.”

“Thank you, Julia,” Eliot said. “I suppose the least I can do is forgive you for the whole trapping him in a nightmare of his own mind thing. So you’re forgiven.”

Julia blinked. That had been years and lifetimes ago and Eliot was still mad at her for the part she’d played in Quentin’s distress. He’d been in love with Quentin since the beginning, it seemed. “Goodbye, Eliot. I don’t think I can do anything to answer your prayer though.”

Eliot’s voice was steady. “That’s okay. I don’t need you to.”

She caught the vaguest image of a gun before Eliot’s prayer faded out and she was left with Iris. “I’m worried about them.”

“You don’t need to be. Not anymore,” Iris smiled and led her farther down the path.


	3. Once More Unto The Breach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the final wrap-up chapter

“For those about to do whatever the fuck it is exactly that we’re all about to do,” Josh called as he stepped into the main room of the Muntjac, “we salute you!”

“What’s happening?” Alice asked.

Margo shrugged as she and Eliot came over from where they’d been conferring. “No idea yet. What’s going on, Josh?”

Josh stood on top of a table, gesturing for everyone to surround him. “Well, lots of shit has happened and we’re are either about to save magic and be heroes or die horribly.”

“Thanks for that,” Penny23 said, deadpan.

“To High King Margo!” Josh held up a bottle of whiskey that had been by his feet and poured it into a glass. He bowed and offered it to Margo “The hottest High King Fillory has ever or will ever see.”

Eliot pouted a bit, but Quentin shuffled over to his side and their arms went around each other instinctively.

Josh gestured to the glasses and bottles he’d been placing around the ship. “Drink up, folks. There’s more toasts to make. To Alice and Penny, for not being kinda not dead anymore in very weird ways.”

Alice’s face scrunched in annoyance but she gulped her whiskey when he poured it.

“To Julia!” He lifted the bottle towards the sky or what seemed like the sky in the Upside Down version of Fillory. “Our Lady of the Trees and we all know a freakin’ goddess, my friends!”

Quentin laughed and gave a small cheer as he lifted his whiskey to Julia, wherever she was now.

Josh bowed, this time to Eliot. “To Eliot, who is either High Queen or Just King Eliot and who did not drink all the booze I hid in the Physical Kids Cottage years ago.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Eliot added as he clinked his glass to Quentin’s and Margo’s.

“To Kady!” Josh raised his glass. “For being the only one of us able to actually kick peoples’ asses without magic. I dub thee, Honorary Queen Kady of the Iron Fist.”

Kady, who had been giving this whole thing a dubious look was startled into laughing at that and she held her glass up to Josh for a healthy dose of whiskey from his bottle. “To Josh,” she said, tipping her half-full glass at him. “For always having the hook-up and for being not too bad of a singer.”

Josh made the most theatrical bow yet. “Thank you, my lady.”

“Honorary King Josh,” Quentin called out, “the Debauched!”

Margo turned to Quentin. “I want to change your title too.” She held her hand out and Josh helped her onto the table, stepping down in his turn. “To finding a way to get magic back and make sure no one has to stay in a creepy old castle with a monster. To being megabitches and growing, as like people at the same time. And to King Quentin,” she smiled at the only person she liked close to as much as she liked Eliot, “the Believer.”

“King Quentin the Believer!” Eliot seconded, hugging the man in question closer to his side as they drank.

The ship shuddered slightly as it made landfall.

The cheerful mood sobered quickly as everyone drained their glasses.

“Right well,” Quentin said, “once more unto the breach and shit. Let’s go save magic.”


End file.
